C4F (Coding for Fun) has been moved to the 3rd Saturday in a month, starting from May the 19th. From now on we will try to do C4F always on the 3rd Saturday each month to avoid overlapping with Chinese holidays C4F is a great opportunity to meet up and do "Show and tell" of you projects, ideas and latest hacks. It's a good platform for socializing, collaborating on projects and spending a whole day on intersting things together with like minded geeks and hackers!
Next C4F is on the 19th of May
Don't forget to bring your Laptop!!!! If you don't own a Laptop, talk to people on the forum or IRC, maybe someone can lent you one for the day! Looking forward to seeing you all at C4F.


HappyLatte is pleased to host this event and will take care of drinks as usual.
If you would like to attend this event (19th of May) we invite you to register below and share with us what kind of project you would like to work on or what you want to learn about.

You may also join the Coding for Fun group here at the website and share your ideas or questions in the forum.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Time: 11AM to evening.
Date: Saturday, 19th May 2012.
Location: Exoweb office
Map: Here at HappyLatte and here (Google Maps).
Optional Registration: Here

In the last few months, BLUG members have shown a growing interest in free hardware with the idea that the great principles that are defining free software could also be applied to hardware by providing design documents, BOMs and even SoC designs in the case of FPGA based hardware such as the Milkymist. Our friends from Digital Freedom International (formerly known as Software Freedom International, we saw what you did there ;-) ) are now launching a new yearly event celebrating culture freedom.

So how can we apply software freedom principles to culture? It greatly depends on the nature of the art and in some cases is quite straightforward: if we look for example at a song, wouldn't it be great if artists could, not only publish the song itself, but also all the information related to the recording? Instruments individual tracks, recording equipment settings and so on. Another example would be a digital graphic for which the author would provide the different layers he has been working on in Gimp. The potential is vast and the idea remains the same: allow individuals to freely use, modify and distribute art.

Sure sounds really interesting and we would like to encourage our members and readers to spread the word and see if some artists would like to organize an event dedicated to the celebration of culture freedom in Beijing. The BLUG itself knows a thing or two about digital art and music and would love to attend or take part in such an event. As it is the case for Software Freedom Day, more information about how to register and organize an event will be available soon on the newly created Culture Freedom Day website.

Once again in 2012, OW2 (The Open Source Community for Infrastructure Software) and Scilab (Free Open Source Software for Numerical Computation) are organizing a joint open source programming contest.

The purpose of the competition is to develop awareness for the OW2 code base among students and technicians, and to provide an opportunity for contestants to demonstrate their talent in computer programming. What's more, the contest aims at promoting teamwork and the ability of college students in science and technology to study and use OW2 open source projects. Based on principles of "freedom, sharing and creativity", and aiming at developing international communication and cooperation, the competition is overseen by IT professionals and academics from around the world.

The deadline for registrations is June 15, 2012. For more information, please check the OW2 Programming Contest 2012 website.

After almost two years of "should I do it or not" former BLUG contributors Pockey and Fred have decided to give it a try and encourage Shantounese to express themselves about their use of GNU/Linux. So far it's really only a website without any regular monthly meeting, but hopefully this will attract enough locals to warrant regular face-to-face interactions. So without further ado BLUG wishes the Shantou GNU/Linux Users Group all the best and hope to see a vibrant GNU/Linux community growing out of this new adventure!

While most of you are preparing to celebrate the upcoming year of the Dragon BLUG would like to take this opportunity to wish you good fortune and happiness for the new year. We hope to have you back on time for the upcoming February meeting (Tuesday February 14th) and if you're still in town during the festivities we might even plan for one of our famous chuan'r night! Nothing is set yet, but feel free to jump into the forum and let us know you'll be around and participating.